


Running Like A Wildfire

by Basser



Series: Can't Rewind Verse [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Child Abuse, Drama, Gen, Mentions of Homosexuality, mentions of drug use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-16
Updated: 2012-12-15
Packaged: 2017-11-21 05:51:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/594176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Basser/pseuds/Basser
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Missing scene from Can't Rewind Now, can be read as a standalone. Sherlock is picked up from rehab by his father. Things do not go well. Later, a young army medic on holiday leave finds himself trying to reassure a panicking teenager outside a London tube station.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sherlock

**Author's Note:**

> A missing scene from my other fic "Can't Rewind Now We've Gone Too Far" which I later re-worked into a standalone. The first eight paragraphs or so are ripped directly from the other piece to provide context, but for further reference just be aware that Sherlock is 19 and was forced into rehab by Mycroft after overdosing on cocaine three months ago.

**««**

On a dreary Wednesday morning he was told by the nurse that his family would be by to pick him up in the afternoon. By 'family' he understood she meant Mycroft, so while he waited in the lobby later for the familiar black towncar to pull up he occupied himself by absently wondering how he was going to react to finally seeing his brother again. Anger would be appropriate, he supposed. Maybe relief if he was going to be a sap about it. Happiness was _extremely_ unlikely, but he ceded it remotely possible. _Very_ remotely.

The most probable scenario was probably going to be simple indifference. After all emotional responses generally required at least a semi-reactive cognitive state, and Sherlock's mind had gone quite thoroughly numb something like a month and a half ago. Not the comfortable anesthesia of cocaine but something dark and stagnant, spreading like rot through every corner of his head until nothing could move for the filth. His brain was literally _decaying_. It had rebelled against the forced dormancy by declaring war against itself and now the battlefield was strewn with putrefying corpses.

Sherlock briefly screwed up his face in disgust at the imagery. _Ugh,_ what was with him and strange abstract visualisations of his mental space? And _why_ was it always either a field or a lake? It would really be better to use some sort of building. Then he'd have a bit more permanence at least, perhaps organised places to keep all his cluttered internal _stuff._ Should try erecting a tower. Have to wait until the corpses cleared out though. And the mud. The rot. Maybe he was getting ahead of himself.

A noise caught his attention and he looked up as the clinic door opened, catching sight of the smart suit and puffed cap of one of his family's valets. Personal staff instead of a government employee? That was new. Might even have been interesting, had he had any capability to be interested by anything anymore. The most feeling Sherlock managed to dredge up was a faint wave of irritation at the fact that his brother was apparently too much of a lazy arse to walk the twenty feet to sign him out himself, but it faded quickly. Too much effort. The manservant handed over a stack of papers, spoke with the receptionist a moment and then initialled a log book before turning to Sherlock and sparing his outfit the barest of distasteful glances.

Sherlock looked down at himself but could see nothing particularly troublesome. Jeans, white t-shirt, navy Oxford hoodie, a pair of still decently-new trainers and the dove grey wool peacoat Mycroft had given him two Christmases ago which he only ever wore because it was easy to hide drugs in the lining (not that there was anything in there now, much to his annoyance). They were the same clothes he'd had on the night of the overdose, which he supposed ended up being sent here out of the convenience of having already been in a hospital bag. Perhaps a little casual, but he hardly felt the need to dress up just to meet his _brother._ Besides, the only clothing the clinic provided was their stupid uniform of loose-fitting activewear and that was hardly a better alternative.

He conveyed his thoughts to the valet with a bland lift of his eyebrows, and with a very slight look of exasperation the man turned and beckoned him to follow.

The shiny black towncar they approached practically screamed 'pompous ass' in its conspicuous display of wealth, and despite the stifling cloud of dysphoria in his head Sherlock felt a jolt of irrational anger flash through him. _Bloody_ Mycroft, with his stupid bloody cars and stupid bloody valets and stupid bloody... bloody _everything._ The only reason Sherlock was even _here_ was because that fat meddling whale hadn't been able to keep his nose out of other peoples' business. It was all his brother's _fault._

An insult jumped to his lips and as he slid into the back seat he was already speaking. "You're a _fuckin-"_

The slur died in his throat as he caught a proper look at the man sitting in the opposite seat. That... wasn't Mycroft.

 _... Oh Christ._ The valet shut the door and walked around to start the engine, locks clicking down automatically. He was trapped.

"Sherlock," his father said mildly, brows slightly raised at the way his son had nearly spoken. Sherlock felt his body start to lock up in a sort of frozen horror. Oh god this was most definitely Not Good, he was going to die. Or worse. _So_ much worse. He very nearly shuddered. Couldn't panic though, not here not _alone_ with this man. He forced his breathing to remain even and wrestled his expression into something approaching calm composure.

"Father," he replied in a voice that was most definitely not strained. _Oh god, Mycroft, why? What did I do? Was it the walrus joke? I'm so sorry about the walrus joke._

His father's head inclined ever so slightly in polite greeting. "It seems we have... matters to discuss."

Sherlock forced his face to stay neutral, only to ruin the effect by clenching his fists in his lap like a child. "Yes, sir."

Father flashed him one of Mycroft's false tight smiles and glanced down at Sherlock's hands with Mycroft's usual slight lift of the browline and the entire effect was _horrifying_ because Siger was just about as far away from his eldest son in terms of morality as it was possible to get. Mycroft at the very least had a _soul,_ even if it was a slightly misshapen one. Siger was a hollow shell which had learned to act human. The fact that they looked nearly identical seemed like the universe's cruel idea of a joke.

Sherlock realised what his father's gaze was hinting at and immediately unclenched his fists.

"Smoking again, are we?" Siger said in a bored tone, noting the nicotine stains.

"Yes," Sherlock muttered, because there was no point in lying. Feeling the car's engine start he wondered where he was being taken. Back home? Oxford? His grave? "... sir," he suddenly added when he realised he'd forgotten. _Oh god there's no way I'm leaving this car alive._

"Neglecting manners as well as dress sense, I see," Siger intoned; it was not a question. Sherlock didn't trust himself to breathe. "You _are_ aware of the role reputation plays in the success of this family, are you not?"

"Of course sir." The correct way to interpret Siger's sentence was, of course, _'I will not tolerate anything that might get us mentioned in the papers.'_ The man was obsessed with keeping a low profile, presumably because he had several schemes of a less than legal nature running and couldn't afford to find himself a tabloid celebrity. The fact that one of his sons had become a rising star in government and the other was both eccentric and visually striking just made him all the more ardent in his refusal to allow scandal of any kind.

"Then I wonder why, given such knowledge, you've deliberately gone against my wishes and drawn attention to yourself?"

"Attention?" Sherlock repeated, forgetting again to add 'sir' in his confusion. _What_ attention? He'd been ridiculously careful not to let anyone catch on, not even his brother's spies had-

Without warning Siger tossed a newspaper in his lap and Sherlock's face drained of all colour as he saw the front page. Across the top of one of last month's issues of the Daily Mirror was the headline _'HOLMES HEIR ON DRUGS - CLASSMATE TELLS ALL'_ printed in bold black lettering above a grainy mobile photo of himself, Seb, and Victor gathered around a tall pub table looking mostly plastered. From the fact that both of his acquaintances were present at the same time he guessed the picture to have been taken a bit less than four months ago. He'd reluctantly introduced them at Seb's request just before the new term, and hadn't gone out drinking with them more than once or twice.

Sherlock didn't remember being present for the photo, but that wasn't particularly surprising since a closer examination revealed his pupils to be roughly the size of pencil rubbers, meaning he'd just done a _massive_ hit of coke and was probably well on his way to blacking out. (He'd gotten less able to judge his own sobriety after the switch to mainlining, having lost the numbness of his face to remind him when it wasn't safe to have another drink.) The 'classmate' part of the headline coupled with Victor's image made Sherlock's heart constrict in a sickening twinge of betrayal for a moment, but as he quickly skimmed the article he realised the informant was actually Seb.

 _Wilkes you backstabbing fuck,_ he thought savagely. The 'anonymous source' essentially just described his abrupt personality shift at the start of Trinity term, relayed a few extremely scant accounts of social events (thankfully nothing about his sex life, as he tended not to chat anyone up unless out with just Victor), and went into frankly lurid detail about the night of his overdose.

Apparently _Seb_ had been the one to find him seizing, which Sherlock hadn't realised or even thought to inquire about. According to the article the man had forgotten his wallet and gone back to retrieve it and while leaving his room had heard someone collapse next door. Nobody answered to his knocking but luckily his absentminded neighbor almost never remembered to lock up, so he'd let himself in and found the lanky boy convulsing on the floor with a used needle lying a few feet away. He'd dialed 999 with his mobile, tucked a nearby jacket around Sherlock's head to try and keep it from slamming into anything too hard, (which explained how Sherlock had managed to get hold of his peacoat, he _had_ been wondering about that) and stayed with him until the paramedics showed up.

The vaguely touching account was quite thoroughly invalidated by Seb's having sold the story to a news rag a few weeks later. _Greedy money-grubbing bastard._

Sherlock re-folded the paper and stared blankly at the photo of himself and his sort-of-friends. "I... hadn't seen this."

"Yes, I'd imagine that would be because your... _brother_ -" Siger said the word as if he wasn't entirely sure it was the appropriate way to describe Mycroft in relation to Sherlock. "- appears to have been largely successful in suppressing the incident. I'm sure I don't need to inform you however that even a single obnoxious headline is far too many. I have already received several... _concerned_ queries regarding your health from associates who happen to follow such matters."

Translation: _Mycroft removed the issue from circulation, a few of my criminal contacts got hold of it anyway and now they're trying to use you as leverage against me._ Sherlock swallowed reflexively. Evidently he'd just become known as a possible weakness to a man who had no weaknesses. That did not bode well for his continued existence.

"I... I'm very sorry, sir," he offered in a futile bid to save himself.

As expected, Siger looked supremely unimpressed. "I'm sure you are. Be that as it may, I have already taken steps to ensure that your... _proclivities_ ," (the stress he put on the word made it clear he knew about the sleeping around too, which meant Sherlock was _absolutely_ going to die) "do not affect the family image negatively."

"Meaning you're going to have me killed," Sherlock uttered flatly. No reason to continue being polite; he was done for anyway. A spark of courage flared in his chest at the realisation that he could finally say whatever he liked to his father without the possibility of digging himself any deeper.

Siger gave him a withering look. "You really think I'd assassinate my own son?"

"Yes," Sherlock asserted without hesitation. Siger didn't seem inclined to dissuade him of his confidence, but Sherlock nonetheless continued; "But I'm _not_ your son, am I? I'm the son of the horse groom you hired and then had quietly murdered because he was sleeping with Mummy behind your back."

Despite the surge of bravery Sherlock's heart was still going a mile a minute, and it kicked up another notch when Siger's face darkened fractionally.

"I suppose I should have expected your deducing that," he said in a bored voice. "You always do seem to notice the most useless of details."

"How is knowing my parentage useless?" Sherlock snapped.

"Because it makes no difference." Siger quirked a brow delicately. "Violet's infidelity has _long_ since been dealt with, and any paternity test you care to order will be well within my ability to alter as I see fit. All your discovery of your illegitimate status has done is make it easier for you to accept what I'm about to do."

Sherlock was working very hard to keep from hyperventilating at the unspoken threat. He reminded himself he had nothing to lose and soldiered on. "Oh? And what'll that be? Going to snap my neck and toss me in the Thames? I had hoped for something a bit more creative."

Siger gave a terrible, amiable chuckle. "Dear me, no. I have much more expedient methods of disposing of a body than the Thames, child." Sherlock's mind instantly jumped to about eighty different conclusions at once, all of them awful. "Unfortunately, as much as I'd prefer to be conclusively rid of you, there is the small matter of your brother to keep in mind."

"What's _he_ got to do with anything?" Sherlock asked, hoping he sounded less unnerved than he felt.

Siger sighed very slightly. "It would seem young Mycroft has secured himself quite a sphere of influence within the British government. While I am of course _extremely_ pleased with his success the circumstances have made it rather dreadfully inconvenient to go around killing his relatives. No, Sherlock, I'm afraid you'll have to live."

The implication seemed to be that he would not necessarily have to live _well._ Visions of being blinded or paralysed flickered horrifically through Sherlock's mind and he started speaking again without thinking. "Then you can't _torture_ me either," he pointed out somewhat frantically. "He'd be really miffed about that, he gets upset when I have nosebleeds. And... and no permanent damage, or he'd go spare."

Siger's brows rose in another one of Mycroft's condescending looks. "My boy I assure you I have neither the time nor inclination to physically disable you in any capacity." At Sherlock's slightly wild look he rolled his eyes. "Or _mentally_ disable you, though goodness knows you seem to have managed that well enough by yourself."

"Wh- I am not _brain damaged!_ " Sherlock sputtered.

"Your choosing to argue with me would seem to suggest otherwise," Siger informed him evenly, a hint of cold steel to his voice that carried with it a subtle threat. The icy tone alone was enough to make Sherlock's mouth snap shut instinctively. His father gave a false smile at his son's forced reticence. "Much better," he affirmed. "Now, Sherlock, the entire point of this little excursion was to secure us time to speak privately without your brother overhearing. Since this leaves us a very narrow window in which to have our discussion I will jump straight to the point: upon leaving this vehicle you shall henceforth be legally disinherited from the Holmes family estate. In addition the Holmes family no longer recognises you as kin and will deny any assistance should you fall into financial or legal trouble. Your actions thus far have been formally repudiated and will continue to be stripped of any official affiliation with the family title for as long as you choose to retain your surname. Do you have any questions?"

Only the fact that Sherlock had been expecting _much_ worse allowed him to keep what was left of his composure. His chest still fluttered too quickly and his hands had clenched into tight fists again, but he nonetheless raised his chin defiantly and met his ex-father's gaze. "No."

"Excellent. In that case I do believe we've reached our destination."

Sherlock startled slightly and glanced out the tinted windows, finding they'd made it all the way to London and were now idling outside a tube station. The clinic must have been nearer to the city than he'd thought.

"You're leaving me at Charing Cross?" he asked blankly. That seemed a little... charitable. He'd half expected to be ditched out in the country somewhere.

"I see no reason to part on poor terms." Siger gave him a look that expressed exactly the opposite. Sherlock put a hand on the door handle (the valet certainly was not going to open it for him) and sneered. His last chance for a final parting shot, might as well take it.

"You know you're a real fucking bas-"

A sudden force slammed him bodily into the door, the feel of crushing fingers on his windpipe alerting him to the fact that Siger was holding him to the window by his neck. He kicked out wildly and scrabbled at the hand on his throat, choking. _Oh god oh god no no no-_

"I have been _extremely_ lenient with you today, child. I'd suggest you not try my patience further." Siger's voice was deadly calm. His face betrayed no emotion whatsoever as he remorselessly strangled the life out of his former son. Sherlock had no choice but to go limp and acquiesce his submission as spots danced in his vision.

Without another word Siger reached behind the younger Holmes with his free hand and unlatched the door, pushing Sherlock onto the pavement with a light shove. The teenager hit hard on his left elbow and immediately scrambled to his feet, heaving great wheezing gasps as he stumbled backwards to clutch a lamp post for support. He glanced up just in time to see Siger Holmes resume his seat, flip a nonchalant parting wave and slam the door. The car drove off.

Sherlock was alone outside Charing Cross station. People were rushing busily to and fro in a sea of bodies around him but none gave so much as a second glance to the teenager who'd just been literally tossed to the kerb. Shivering with adrenaline Sherlock steadied his rasping breath and shakily relinquished his crushing hold on the lamp post.

The world seemed to expand far too rapidly as his briefly oxygen-starved brain reoriented itself, and he felt sick to his stomach with a sudden vertigo. The skin of his arms and chest broke into a cold, tingling sweat and his heart refused to slow its frantic hammering against his ribcage no matter how steadily he breathed. As an acute sense of impending doom washed over him he rather abruptly realised he was having a panic attack.

Sherlock sat down heavily to tuck his head between his knees and gasped heaving, jagged breaths. People moved past him in an uncaring miasma of faces and clothes. The numb doldrums of his mind seemed to have gone up in a raging firestorm.

Suddenly a face broke free of the crowds, was by his side, touching his arm. He flinched away violently and reeled with the spinning nausea the action produced.

"Hey, it's alright. I'm just making sure you're okay," the face said. Sherlock stared wild-eyed at it and watched as shapes coalesced into the plain sturdy features of a very average-looking man in his late twenties. "It's alright, I'm a doctor."

"P-piss off!" Sherlock stammered. He hated anyone seeing him like this, least of all some _stranger_. "I'm _f-f-fine!"_

"You don't sound too fine," the doctor pointed out. Sherlock bared his teeth and forced himself to stand. The hands that gently steadied him when he inevitably stumbled felt like knives even through the thick wool of his coat sleeves. "Here, let's just get out of the walkway."

"I don't need your pi-" he broke off to swallow heavily with vertigo as the shorter man steered him into the lee of a fence where the space was free of pedestrians and guided him to a sitting position against the moulding.

"It's not pity, it's common sense. Leaving someone out on the pavement who's having a fit's potentially dangerous. Someone could've tripped over you and then where would we be?"

Sherlock was too busy curling into a ball and hyperventilating to come up with any sort of witty retort.

"Whoa, hey, alright. It's okay. In, out. In, out." The doctor was rubbing small circles into his back, which in his heightened state was all he could focus on. It was a solid presence in the flames otherwise consuming his head and strangely soothing. After a few minutes he finally calmed down enough to start breathing normally. "Okay?" the doctor asked.

"No," Sherlock intoned, because he'd just been thrown out of a car by his neck after being disowned by a psychopath and he was pretty certain none of that qualified as okay.

"Fair enough. Can I have a look at your face for a minute? Check pupils and such, you know," the very ordinary man asked. He kept lightly touching Sherlock on the arms and shoulders which was annoying, but the small soothing circles on his back never stopped so he accepted it as tradeoff.

"I had a panic attack, not a seizure," he mumbled into the centre of his tightly curled ball.

"Do you get those too?" the man said in some sort of generically authoritative Doctor Voice.

"Only when I've done an enormous amount of drugs," Sherlock replied blandly.

"Bit not good then, huh?" He was very gently tapping the top of Sherlock's head in an effort to get him to lift it, so Sherlock finally raised his face to squint balefully at the good samaritan. "Pupils look fine," the man assured him.

 _They won't for long,_ Sherlock thought, and hoisted himself roughly into a standing position. He felt a bit weak still but no longer nauseous, which meant he now had one objective and one objective only.

"Whoa, oi! Slow down there," the doctor was saying. Sherlock rounded on the smaller man and threw the full force of his sociopathy behind a vicious glare.

"Thank you for your assistance. I am going to find a cocaine dealer now, I suggest you allow me unhindered passage out of this alcove to do so." His voice was low and menacing, helped along by his three months of illicit chain smoking and the recent near-strangulation.

The little doctor simply raised his eyebrows.

"You think I can't stop you?" he asked, wholly unmoved by Sherlock's psycho-stare.

Sherlock frowned. "I _know_ you can't stop me."

The doctor regarded him for a moment, seeming to size him up, and Sherlock did his best to appear as physically menacing as possible. It wasn't hard, considering he had about half a foot on the man and the three months in rehab had temporarily cured him of his usual wraith-like appearance by virtue of being forced to eat on a daily basis. The man still didn't seem suitably intimidated, but he did raise his hands in a sort of exasperated placating gesture and took a step back.

"Alright, alright, but only because I think it would do more harm than good to fight you right now."

Sherlock sneered at him. "How conscientious of you. Good day."

He tucked his hands into his coat pockets and sidestepped neatly past the doctor, feeling the man's doleful eyes on him as he strode quickly away. It didn't matter. All he could think about was the scorched field of soot his brain had become in the wake of the firestorm; how ugly it was, and how beautiful the snow had been.

The memory of the doctor soon burned up in the residual heat and scattered away.

**««**


	2. John

**««**

His leave was up in a few days. Ostensibly he should have been taking advantage of his last bit of free time before deployment to catch up with friends and spend time with his family, but instead John found himself wandering alone through the crowded streets of central London. All his real friends were back at base camp, and he didn't _want_ to hang around his family. Harry was drinking again for one thing, and Mum wouldn't stop shooting him these sad little looks like she was expecting him to get his head blown off the second he touched down on his next tour. Clara of course was being practically insufferable with her constant coddling questions after his mental health and Dad kept boasting about his son's lengthening service record to anyone within earshot like it was a personal badge of honour. John was really getting a bit sick of it all. So he'd joined the army, who cared? Thousands of other people his age had done the same thing, it was a career path just like any other. He didn't see why everyone had to kick up such a fuss.

He was meandering aimlessly around Westminster, having somehow made his way to the Charing Cross area and debating whether to bother taking the tube somewhere, when a rather out-of-place black towncar nearly ran him down as he was crossing the street. Flipping it off was severely tempting, but it wasn't likely to do much good so he stifled the impulse. Instead he continued along to the other side of the road and resumed his leisurely stroll. The station was just up ahead, maybe he would take a tube after all.

The light crowd of mid-afternoon commuters around Charing Cross bustled along in shifting patterns of faces and bodies and instead of heading directly for the gates John let himself be carried along by the current. On second thought he might just find a takeaway and bring it over to Harry's. Clara was away on that overnight trip for work, and it would probably be a good idea to make sure his sister ingested something besides liquor while her girlfriend was out. With this in mind he turned toward the kerb, intending to cross the street again, and practically tripped over some kid curled up under a lamp post.

Alright, well, that was a bit of an exaggeration. More like he stopped just short of trodding on a rather distraught-looking teenager sitting half-slouched under a lamp post. The particulars didn't really matter though, as none of them changed the fact that the young man was fairly obiviously having some sort of anxiety attack and could do with assistance.

Instantly John's medical training kicked in and he crouched next to the youth, who appeared to be focusing very hard on not hyperventilating. It was difficult to place an exact age - the boy was definitely in his late teens (or perhaps _very_ early twenties at a stretch) but even hunched over John could tell he was quite tall, and he had a thin, aristocratic face that seemed to make him look both older and younger at the same time. Pale, spindly musician's hands were clutched protectively over his head, fingers getting tangled amongst a bird's nest of shortish black curls while he stared fixedly at the pavement with his face tucked between his knees.

Panic attack, John identified quickly. Easy enough to treat. Just had to get the patient to a safe place and provide reassurance.

"You alright there?" he asked. When the teenager didn't respond he reached out and gently tapped the boy on the arm to get his attention.

The young man flinched violently and whipped his hands off his head to scuttle back into the lamp post, going faintly green with what John assumed to be vertigo. Grey-blue eyes snapped up to stare at him with a sort of blank, feral look.

"Hey, it's alright," John said, trying to sound soothing and authoritative at the same time. "I'm just making sure you're okay." The boy kept staring, a slight edge of wariness creeping into his expression. "It's alright, I'm a doctor," John added quickly, hoping to ease any mistrust concerning his motives. All he got for his efforts was a savage glare.

"P-piss off!" the teenager sputtered, practically snarling up at him. "I'm _f-f-fine!_ "

Well obviously he wasn't, if he was stuttering like that. John pointed this out as kindly as he could but the kid was having none of it. He bared his teeth like some sort of wild animal and visibly struggled to haul himself into a standing position. John straightened up as well in preparation for... _yep,_ there it was. Predictable as anything the boy pitched forward, unable to keep his balance between the vertigo and muscle tremors. John reached out and caught him lightly by the biceps before he could collapse onto the pavement.

"Here, let's just get you out of the walkway," he said, glancing around with what he hoped was a reassuring expression as a few passersby shot them curious looks.

"I don't need your pi-" The teenager's sentence choked off as he went green again and swallowed. John made a concerted effort to keep the exasperation out of his voice as he began leading the stubborn kid over to one of the wrought-iron fences by the station where there was less chance of their being trampled by the mid-afternoon foot traffic.

"It's not pity, it's common sense," he quipped, thinking the boy would probably respond better to a bit of mild sarcasm than any sort of sugarey platitudes. "Leaving someone out on the pavement who's having a fit's potentially dangerous. Someone could've tripped over you and then where would we be?"

The teenager didn't respond, and John managed to steer him into a sitting position against the concrete moulding of one of the fences. Once seated the young man immediately grabbed at his hair again and tucked his knees up against his chest in a protective ball. John noted with alarm that his breathing was becoming dangerously erratic.

"Whoa, hey, alright. It's okay. In, out. In, out." The kid didn't seem to be listening to him, so John went for the next best thing and started rubbing small, light circles into his back through the thick wool of what looked like a very expensive peacoat. After an initial flinch at the contact the the boy relaxed somewhat, and within a minute or so his respirations evened out into a more normal rythm. He still didn't seem to want to uncurl from his little ball, however.

John gave him another minute or so, then quietly asked if he was okay. The dull _'no'_ he got in response was a little breathless, but distinctly sardonic, making John grin slightly in relief. Yeah okay, the kid was fine.

Still, he'd best be absolutely sure. "Fair enough. Can I have a look at your face for a minute?" He wanted to check for any signs of stroke or other neurological symptoms, just in case the incident had been more than a simple anxiety response. Unobtrusively as possible he tried to get a quick gauge of the boy's heartrate (having to make due with the subclavian artery when he couldn't get access to any of the usual pulse points) all the while maintaining the steady circular pattern in case of a rebound episode.

The kid mumbled something about having had a panic attack, not a seizure, and John frowned in concern. If the boy knew what pupil response checks were for he probably had some prior knowledge of brain disorders, which could mean he was a possible epileptic.

"Do you get those too?" he asked, voice coming out more sternly than he'd meant it to. Well, he _was_ used to dealing with soldiers.

The boy's back jerked a little, like he'd tried to snort derisively but was still too out of breath to do more than huff. "Only when I've done an enormous amount of drugs," he muttered in a dull, sarcastic monotone.

John grimaced slightly. Sarcasm aside, the kid didn't sound like he was joking. John hated to think what that meant for the boy's home life - teenagers generally didn't just start up drug habits without good reason, as much as the media would love to pretend otherwise. But all he said on the matter was a vague, "bit not good then, huh?" He wasn't a counselor, and it wasn't his place to try and meddle in the life of some kid he'd just met on the street.

Thinking it might get the boy to lift his head a bit, John turned his attention to very lightly tapping the mop of dark curls with a forefinger. After a few seconds his efforts were rewarded with a stony-eyed glare from under a very messy fringe. He quickly studied the pupils; contracting normally for the ambient light level, nice and equal. Everything looked fine.

He conveyed as much to his patient and got a strange, slightly sardonic sneer in return. Then all at once the boy reached behind him to grab hold of one of the fence bars and physically hauled himself to his feet.

"Whoa, oi! Slow down there!" John admonished. The teenager blinked once and teetered very slightly, then seemed to find his footing and _glared_ with such venom that John very nearly took a step back.

"Thank you for your assistance," the boy bit out, voice a bit husky from what sounded like a pretty heavy smoking habit. "I am going to find a cocaine dealer now, I suggest you allow me unhindered passage out of this alcove to do so."

John raised his eyebrows. Cocaine, huh? Well, that made sense. Expensive coat, posh accent... obviously from a rich family, he'd likely folded under the pressure of too-steep parental expectations and fell back on drugs as a coping mechanism. Definitely an ongoing problem too, if he'd managed to build up enough tolerance to get to the point of inducing seizures.

He met the young man's gaze with a level stare and carefully kept the pitying expression off of his face as he responded. "You think I can't stop you?"

"I _know_ you can't stop me."

Well the kid had confidence at least. John eyed the lanky form, noting the rigid posture and the way the boy was trying to draw himself up to look more threatening. It didn't work, of course. True the kid was a few inches taller than John, but he obviously didn't have much fighting experience beyond schoolyard scuffles and was skinny as a bloody rail besides. For a brief moment John considered incapacitating him - surely it would be better to disable the kid and call an ambulance rather than let him escape into the streets to get high? - but one look at the boy's face and he tossed the notion aside. There was a spark of frightened desperation behind the young man's careful, frigid glare. A tenseness to his stance betraying loud and clear that for all the chilly apathy this was really nothing more than some scared kid having a _really_ shit day.

John didn't like the idea of letting the kid run off to find a dealer, but adding another stressful situation on top of what was obviously already a bad set of circumstances would just exacerbate the problem. He raised his palms in surrender and stepped back, unable to keep the slightly exasperated look off his features as he backed down.

"Alright, alright, but only because I think it would do more harm than good to fight you right now."

The boy shot him a sneer which was tinged with just a faint undercurrent of relief. He hadn't wanted to fight either. "How conscientious of you," he snapped. "Good day."

And without so much as a backward glance the willowy youth stepped past him and stalked off into the crowds, head ducked low and shoulders taut as he shoved his pale hands into the pockets of his peacoat. John watched him go with a morose expression and shook his head sadly. He hoped the boy found help before it was too late.

Heaving a sigh, John turned to head back toward the street. Forget going to Harry's, he'd just keep walking.

**««**


End file.
